Ramp Door - ATV Tires Making Grooves

[rcolemanreed]

Has anyone else noticed that their ATV's are leaving grooves in their ramp door?

We have a Honda Pioneer 1000 that we just took out for the first time since buying the trailer (Momentum 398M) new about 4 months ago. The Honda loaded fine, anchored fine, traveled fine. Drove it down the ramp very slowly and I noticed that it the tires had left grooves on both the right and left sides. When we were taking notes prior to buying a 5th wheel toy hauler one of the sales people actually told us that the ramp door would support way more weight than what the door was rated for... It may support the weight just fine however, they should manufacture it using a material that is much harder than what they are currently using.

We also have a location on the ramp where a rivet head from the fencing has worn a hole completely through the deck skin. This obviously occurs when the ramp door is locked in the upright position. IMO, the entire back-end of the trailer (ramp door and slider doors) need to be completely redesigned.

Again, has anyone else experienced these issues or, am I just the "Lucky One"?

[TucsonJim]

Based on the lack of responses Roger, it appears you are the "Lucky One".

Have you talked to your dealer yet to see if they can get feedback from Grand Design?

Jim

[Vortex]

I'm lucky too! We bought a 2023 351 MS in the fall. Hadn't loaded our 950 pound Harley until this spring. We are out on a trip now and have noticed a groove right up the center. Hoping now this condition doesn't worsen. This is or 3rd toy hauler, first by grand design, and never have never seen this happen.

[Thorvald]

My 25G has the same issue with the new “weatherproof” door. My Motorcycle has left a definite shallow grove down the door from the tires. Not a huge issue but annoying.

I’m still shocked how much water comes out of that door when it is opened sometimes, just pours out from the bolts. Planning to see about sealing this thing better but I don’t want to trap water either. Future project.

Cheers
Tim

[rcolemanreed]

Hi Everyone!

I'm terribly sorry for the late response. My wife and I have been inundated this past year with a plethora of time sensitive projects so I'll cut to the chase and try to be as brief but, descriptive, as possible.

In September of 2022 I handed our dealer service advisor a list of 33 items that required fixing. I also provided detailed pictures of every one of those line items. My contention was that the trailer never should have made it past QA at the factory! Unfortunately, I did have to get Grand Design corporate involved after a severe lack of communication/follow-up from our dealers repair facility. Consequently, I took the liberty of sending an email to Don Clark, GDRV CEO describing the issues we were experiencing. I received a call the next day from Morgan Leonard, the Consumer Relations Manager. She was very courteous and apologetic that we were having so many issues with our "brand new" toy hauler. The biggest issue of these 33 line items was the ramp door which had the very visible grooves in it from our ATV (Honda Pioneer) tires. Grand Design agreed to replace the ramp door under warranty. It took our dealer repair facility from February to almost the end of May 2023 to complete this one line item! Our trailer is full body paint which might have taken a bit more time but, 3 months...really??? They didn't even take the time to charge up my batteries prior to the scheduled pickup. They were completely dead not allowing me to operate the hydraulic leveling system.

We now have the trailer back with the new ramp door and many unfinished warranty items as described in our original list. Some of the items have been worked on but, are worse now than they were prior to bringing the trailer in to them! Overall, I would rate our dealer repair facility a 1 out of 10 for customer satisfaction. I will contact my sales person tomorrow and get the ball rolling on their end as our warranty expires in 4 days and only about half the "warranty" work has been accomplished.

Overall, this has been a very negative experience for us. We have wasted so much of our personal time documenting and making phone calls just trying to get some resolution.

I'll provide updates as I get them.

Take care,
Roger

[rcolemanreed]

Hi Vortex,

If your trailer is still under warranty, you should notify your dealer and have them make a warranty claim. Ours was replaced under warranty due to our ATV making similar grooves. This is definitely a manufacturing issue. They are using a material that won’t withstand the typical ATV weight. They must correct this issue. I’m sure it will happen again to our new ramp door as I don’t believe they have had enough complaints to make change the design/materials.

Take care,
Roger

[Jlawles2]

This may sound like a crappy thing to need to do, but have you considered adding say 1/2" plywood runners or 1" X 12" runners to the door to help with distributing the load over a wider area?

Agree you should not have to do this, but since there is a compromise with insulation value vs ramp, the inside is probably a thinner plywood material vs the ramp doors used on utility trailers being solid wood.

[Vortex]

Yes it is crappy to need to strengthen a toy haulers ramp in order to load your toys. Actually it's ridiculous. I sent a few photos to Lippert of my ramp door groove and water pouring out of the weep holes as it does every time it rains. They told me that it was not a defect, that I damaged my ramp and therefore there is no warranty but they would be happy to sell me the pieces to fix it. That, ladies and gentlemen, is the definition of crappy. I just pray that my frame never fails as so many have and strand people wherever they may be only to be turned down by Lippert. And as they are sewing up their Monopoly on the business they can do whatever they want. All I intended to do was let them know that I'm coming close to the end of my year and wanted to document my case and their response was to blame me. So congrats to the OP on getting your door replaced consider yourself lucky!

[Jlawles2]

You can try and outsmart their warranty dept and ask for a loading diagram and allowable wheel loading on the door. If they don't have this and GD did not provide it to the owner (guessing it's not buried in the literature anywhere) then how would an end user know???? Are there any tags that state max load on the door? Failure to mark the door COULD be the fault of the MFG or the vendor (GD) to provide such information. I really don't want to throw GD under the bus and hopefully LCI never provided the necessary information making it a LCI problem since they failed to provide the necessary.

If they do provide you loading double check for dates possible that they would back date the information, but unlikely that they would think that fast.

Cate&Rob howson TucsonJim Anyone have any information on loading diagrams for the doors??? This might be critical moving forward.

[howson]

Unfortunately, no, Jlawles2

[Vortex]

Just a quick update, spoke to customer service at GD and at least they are real about this. Even though the door is rated at 3000 lbs my bike is too heavy in the center. No reinforcement in the center. Not a good design IMO. So I will be going with Joseph's suggestion and carrying a ramp to put on my ramp. Don't want to attach anything as we use it as a patio too. Definitely getting deeper each use. All this should be disclosed before plunking down six figures for a toy hauler! Not my favorite thing to engineer new products in the field for multi million dollar companies at my (our) expense. Now putting my soapbox away.

[rcolemanreed]

Thanks everyone for the input and advice. I've been away for awhile. GD has been good to work with but, my dealer is struggling. Over the past year, we've taken the trailer in for a plethora of problems and, 50 percent of the time, they have made the problems worse or, created other issues in addition to the original problem. I need to post another issue about Upper Deck Flexing...not sure which area to post this but, we need to address screws popping up through the linoleum in the bedroom floor. This has been happening since we took the trailer out on her maiden voyage. GD still has us under warranty due to the amount of time we've been without the trailer. This has been so incredibly frustrating!! Vortex, I have had no issues (yet) with my ramp door since being replaced. We have a Yamaha FX Cruiser that we load into it when camping near a lake. It is heavy but, way under the limit that the door can handle. I've told GD that considering the six + figures that we paid for the trailer, we should not be having any of these major issues!! It's a good thing we're retired otherwise we wouldn't have the time to deal with all of the problems! 😊

[Thorvald]

It will be interesting to see how Chad & Tara make out (YouTube ChangingLanes channel) with the new trailer and their heavy Indian bike. I’ll see if I can contact them to keep an eye on it but they must put that thing in and out at least weekly so I would expect they would be seeing a grove as well.

[Vortex]

Roger and Jan, good to hear no more issues with your ramp but having so many other issues is disappointing. I hope they get you squared away. We are out on another trip and talking to other GD toy hauler owners with heavy Harleys and none are experiencing this issue. So between what you have reported and others as well I am convinced I have a defective ramp and will pursue through my dealer this time. Also have seen a few examples of ramps made by MORryde and they are nice. No exterior hinges bolted through the door, no gap between the ramp and garage floor and automotive style latches at the top so the door won't end up bowing over time like mid latches do. November 30th we drop Rv off for service mainly for a major leak around bedroom slide and a gouge in the roof of the couch slide we caught on delivery. Will post more later...keep on truckin!